- The process opened on Monday for the registration of keys, but this registration can be done at any time;
- Banks and fintechs started a race for “pre-registration” weeks ago.
PIX, the Brazilian Central Bank instant payment system, starts receiving users’ keys registrations today, although it only comes into effect on November 16. The digital tool will simplify payments, purchases, and money transfers in Brazil, allowing transactions to happen any time of the day, any day of the week.
In practice, a key for using PIX can be the user’s taxpayer registry number (known by the acronym CPF in Portuguese), cellphone number, or e-mail address. As users can’t use the same key in two different financial institutions, banks and fintechs such as Itaú and MercadoPago started a race to a kind of “pre-registration” of these keys in September.
To date, 677 institutions are ready to start securely registering keys (here is the list of institutions already approved by the Central Bank, and those that are still in the middle of the process). This part of the process is going to take place until November 2.
It is still unclear whether Brazilian users really understood PIX. Several institutions have asked for the registration of keys through their applications and internet banking interfaces. Perhaps users will only understand the limitations implicit in PIX when using the system starting in November.
By registering his or her keys beforehand, the account holder will have the convenience of this action being ready on November 16. It’s important to point out that the key is a facilitator of transactions within the future system, but that it is not mandatory, since it will be possible to also make operations by manually entering data or reading a QR Code. Besides that, users can register keys whenever they want, and also change institutions within PIX as many times as they want.
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Brazilian Central Bank doesn’t have official numbers about key pre-registration but said it is allowing the population to become familiar with PIX and financial and payment institutions to compete with each other in order to offer better and cheaper services to customers.
